5 'Rare' Things That Are Way More Common Than You Think

#2. Unclimbed Mountains

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Today literally anyone can pay $50,000 to have a Sherpa guide drag their ass up to the tippity top of Mount Everest, which you might be aware is the tallest mountain on Earth. We've mentioned that, as a result, Everest is packed with visitors every year, to the point that if you climb it, you'll find yourself joined by 70-year-old Korean tourists sucking on supplemental oxygen and standing triumphant with 100 of their best friends.

And if the world's most daunting peak is now nothing more than a high-altitude Disney World, then that must mean that every formidable mountain on the planet has by now been trampled by glory seekers looking for bragging rights on Facebook.

Ablestock.com/AbleStock.com/Getty Images"Nature, I'm lovin' it."

But Actually ...

There are lots of extremely tall mountains that remain unclimbed for a number of reasons. The main reason is that, believe it or not, there is a limit to the insanity of die-hard mountaineers -- many tall peaks are so remote that an emergency rescue is completely out of the question.

Also, some countries that are hoarding a bunch of tall-ass mountains simply won't let spandex-clad Europeans in to conquer them. Bhutan, for example, doesn't allow any mountain climbers in and is home to the world's tallest unclimbed mountain, Gangkar Puensum.

RhionIf Colorado's taught us anything, it's that mountain climbers are the harbingers of moral decay.

Tibet alone has 255 unclimbed peaks that are at or above 20,000 feet, according the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation. For reference, Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in North America, and the third tallest in the world, at 20,320 feet. China likewise has a shit-ton of mountains well over 18,000 feet that are simply in the bumblefuck middle of nowhere and no one has bothered to climb them yet. It could be you! Although, if we know our audience, it probably won't be.

#1. Oil

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There's a reason why scientists are scrambling to develop new technologies to replace our dependence on oil, even apart from the whole "killing the planet" thing. Considering that the Earth isn't making any more dinosaurs, the slimy black byproduct of their violent extinction is a finite resource, and we're constantly being warned that the day we'll have to start killing our neighbors to siphon the last drops out of their gas tanks is terrifyingly near.

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images"Better practice. Dale down the street is pretty girthy."

But Actually ...

Occasionally you'll run into somebody claiming that the whole thing is a drummed-up fake crisis, because by some estimates, there are centuries of oil left. They're not wrong. But they're not right, either.

See, the world isn't running out of oil -- it's not even close. What the world is running out of is cheap oil.

The reason it's easy to panic about running out of oil is because we keep conflating "the oil we know about" with "all the oil that exists." Those who say that we're running out of oil are usually pointing to what's left of the oil that we're already extracting. And they're right -- the conventional oil that's in the ground amounts to about 1.3 trillion barrels, which sounds like a lot, but we use more than 30 billion barrels a year now. So quick math says that we'll run out within 40 years, and that's not even accounting for the fact that the number of cars on the road is exploding, as countries like China realize that bicycles are bullshit.

Photos.comRickshaw's are OK, because watching someone suffer for your convenience will always be fun.

But then there is the oil we haven't found yet, and more importantly, the "unconventional" sources. Oil shale -- basically, oil embedded in a certain kind of rock that is a huge pain in the ass to extract -- accounts for up to another 3 trillion barrelsin the United States alone. There are trillions more in tar sands and other sources that we never extracted before because it was so much easier to drill it out of wells. But, as the price of oil goes up, it becomes profitable to go digging for oil in these increasingly inconvenient places, which is why production keeps booming, despite doomsday predictions.

There are four countries in particular that are experiencing current oil production booms that experts believe will catapult our production capacity to as much as 20 percent more than it is today by 2020. Brazil, the U.S., Canada, and Iraq are all places where previously inaccessible oil sources are now vomiting out the precious black dino-batter like never before. Processes like hydrofracking are so effective at freeing up previously unrecoverable oil that by 2020, it is predicted that the U.S. will be the largest producer of oil in the world.

In fact, the big problem with fighting global warming is going to be the fact that there is so, so much oil left to burn, and that this oil will be both affordable and actually worse for the environment than the stuff that caused the problem in the first place. The truth is, there will likely be plenty of oil left right up until the moment when we force ourselves to stop drilling for it. After all, the discovery of a previously unknown cake in the back of the refrigerator doesn't mean that we should continue shoveling cake into our mouths. At some point, we've got to show some goddamn restraint.

Eising/Photodisc/Getty ImagesShit, we should have picked a less delicious metaphor.

And stop by LinkSTORM to discover why you should just go ahead and buy that Monster Truck.

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